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Major had been pacing back and forth half the day, it seemed. He was too wired to sit down, still filled with the adrenaline of last night's attack and the astounding possibilities opened up by the guy he had shot in the chest—three times in the chest—getting up and walking out like nothing had happened. What the hell?

He'd been on the phone calling Ravi and Clive all day, barely restraining himself from adding Liv to the list, unable to stop spiraling in the midst of his own thing to really know how to feel for her. To lose someone you cared about suddenly, violently, the way she had lost Lowell, was horrible—but Major wasn't sure he was ready to think about Liv caring about some other guy enough to let it get to her.

It was a relief when the doorbell rang. Major let Clive in, waiting anxiously to hear what the detective had to say. "Did you find Julian? Is he dead?"

"No, I found him at the gym. He was benching 350. Less than ten hours after you say you put three bullets in his chest."

"Look, I'm telling you, I shot him!"

Clive pulled out his phone, tapped it a couple of times and showed Major a picture of Julian Dupont bench-pressing. "That him? It's from this morning."

It wasn't possible. Major had shot this man last night. He knew he had, absolutely for certain knew it. "No, man," he muttered. The evidence was in front of him, incontrovertible evidence … but he knew what he had done, and he knew what he had seen.

"You've gotta listen right now," Clive told him. "I've been in a lot of rooms where guns went off, and that room doesn't look like any of them. No bullets, no blood, and the man you say you shot, didn't get shot. What you're saying happened, didn't happen. And if you believe it did, you've got a problem."

Still clutching Clive's phone, Major found his way to the couch, his legs giving way beneath him. There was no way that both Clive's/Julian's version of the story and Major's could exist in the same universe. But they did. Unless what Major thought had happened had all been in his head. He'd been under stress, no doubt about that. He'd been obsessed with Julian and Jerome and the Candy-Man. Could he have hallucinated Julian's attack on him last night? And if he had, could a hallucination really feel that real?

Watching him, weighing his words carefully, Clive asked, "You heard of a 220?"

Major shook his head.

"Involuntary commitment to a psych facility. We use it when behavior is erratic, dangerous, and escalating. You're three for three."

Studying the phone, the picture, Major wanted to argue with the calm, emotionless assessment, but he knew that if he were Clive and he was faced with one of the kids from the shelter acting the way it must seem Major had been, he would be recommending psych evaluation, too. Maybe he needed it. God knew he couldn't make sense of what was going on on his own.

"Hear this," Clive went on, not unsympathetically. "Get help. Now. Before someone gets it for you." Coming toward Major, reaching for his phone, he asked, "You need me to call someone?"

Major could only think of one person he wanted right now, and she—was out of his reach. He handed Clive his phone back. "Thanks for being straight with me."

Clive nodded, patting Major on the shoulder. "Take care of yourself, man."

He left, leaving Major sitting there alone, trying to make sense of the idea that what he had seen, what he had done, had never happened, when he knew as surely as he knew anything at all that it had.

By the next morning, he had decided. He hauled out his suitcase and began packing, glad to have a task, taking it seriously, packing nothing that didn't pass the sniff test. He looked up only when Ravi, in pajamas and half-awake morning face, poked his head around the doorframe.

"Can I interest you in a coffee?"

"I'm good."

Ravi came further into the room, looking more awake as he frowned at Major's packing job. "You're leaving me. What's his name?"

Major didn't look up, playing along only out of habit and a certain amount of affection for Ravi and his steadfast good humor. "Ah, it's not important. Just know that what we had was real." His roommate smiled, acknowledging the joke given and received, and Major went on, "Actually, I, uh, talked to my supervisor at Helton Shelter, she referred me to a guy who specializes in psychotic disorders. Yeah, he thinks I'm a good candidate for Blooming Grove."

"Wait, you're not checking yourself in to a mental hospital—you're not crazy!" Ravi insisted. "You've been under enormous stress! You just need to get away, go on vacation."

"Ravi, I'm seeing things! I'd swear on a stack of Bibles that guy Julian was here. I'd swear his eyes turned red, that I shot him. If someone at my psych internship told me that, and there was a picture of that guy at the gym the next day? There's no question. It's delusional disorder, with paranoid features. You can't fix that with a vacation."

Ravi's face was pinched, as if Major's pain was his pain, and Major appreciated that, but he couldn't be swayed by well-meaning friends. He had to get help now, before things got any worse. Before he hurt someone.

"I don't have a choice."

Without another word, Ravi turned and walked out of the room, and Major returned to his packing, finding something soothing in the process. This, at least, was real. It was tangible. Right now, he was in control of his own mind, and when was the last time he had been sure of that? The night before that damned boat party, he thought bitterly. When his whole life started to go off the rails. Maybe now, maybe with some help, he could get back on track.